PRIVATE KENNETH POWELL
HONOURABLE ARTILLERY COMPANY
18TH FEBRUARY 1915 AGE 29
BURIED: LOKER CHURCHYARD, BELGIUM
Resurgam - I will rise again - expresses the fundamental tenet of Christian belief as summarised in the Apostles Creed, "I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting". Resurgam is the word Christopher Wren had carved over the south door of St Paul's Cathedral underneath a carving of a phoenix. A stone with this word on it had been found amongst the rubble after the Great Fire and Wren had placed it at the heart of the new foundations. Is this what inspired Private Powell's father, a leather merchant in the City of London, the thought of something mighty rising from ruins. Or was he thinking of the bible, Micah 7:8:
"Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise, when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me."
Kenneth Powell, educated at Rugby and King's College, Cambridge, was an Olympic athlete - representing Britain in the hurdles in both the 1908 and 1912 Olympic Games - and a Wimbledon tennis player, competing there between 1908 and 1911 and again in 1913.
He was hit by a chance bullet on the night of 17 February whilst returning from fatigue work in the trenches. He was taken to the Field Ambulance at Loker and operated on the next morning but he died almost immediately afterwards.